For as long as she can remember, Andrea Maki has loved nature and all its wild creatures. And horses — riding horses, drawing horses and generally being “a horse-crazy kid.”

She was raised in an artistic family — her father Robert Maki is a well-known sculptor who taught art and mechanical drawing at Gig Harbor’s Peninsula High School in the early 1960s and Andrea herself is a painter and mixed-media artist. She currently lives in Kingston, Washington.

And as a professional artist, she frequently has used her art to call attention to the natural environment and the need to protect it.

Back in 1999, Maki was shooting photos of wild horses in eastern Washington for an art project and was deeply moved by their beauty and grace.

She was working on a similar art project in 2005 when she learned that a U.S. Senator from Montana had attached a rider to an appropriations bill “in the wee hours,” that undermined the 1971 Wild and Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act.

Fast forward to 2010 when she took her beloved German shepherd to a vet in Idaho to have surgery, thinking she could do some more wild horse photography while Kiowa was recovering.

It turned out to be a life-changing experience as she had an opportunity to interact with several wild mares that had been captured during the Bureau of Land Management’s annual helicopter roundup in Challis, Idaho.

“Standing alone with those beautiful wild mares I felt an amazing connection with them and I looked them in the eye and promised them that I’d do everything I possibly could to help them get back to their home turf,” Maki said.

That vow resulted in her founding a non-profit organization called Wild Love Preserve with the two-fold mission of protecting Idaho’s wild horses by creating a wildlife preserve where they could live in their natural, wild habitat — along with all the other plants and animals found in that ecosystem.

“I want to protect the system as a whole, the native vegetation and terrain and all the animals that share that environment,” she said. “I believe that we cannot pull out one species without affecting the whole. Everything is connected.”

When the BLM conducted its 2012 Challis roundup, WLP adopted the 137 wild horses that had been captured, and released them on 400 acres that Maki had managed to lease

adjacent to the Challis Herd Management Area, a 154,150-acre expanse of public land that is home to two bands of Challis wild horses.

The Challis HMA also is used for recreation and even some grazing.

Maki’s approach in growing WLP has to bring together very diverse groups — ranchers, environmentalists, scientists and local citizens — to find common ground in support of the wild horses.

“It was a big leap of trust,” she said, “but I just started knocking on doors and introducing myself and telling them my ideas and listening to what they had to say.

“A lot of people told me that there was no way I could get cattle ranchers, BLM people, environmentalists and the local citizens together to work for a common goal, but I really believe that if we listen to each other and get to know all the things we have in common we can learn to respect each other and trust each other.

“We might not agree with each other on everything, but we all have families and pets and so many other things in common that we care about.”

The fact that she was an “outsider” actually worked in her favor, because the locals realized that she wasn’t aligned with anyone or any group, which turned out to be important in bridging all the potential divides between the groups and individuals.

“I’m just representing the wild horses and asking everyone if they’d be willing to share their stories and work with me and Wild Love Preserve to create a new model for wild horse management that could benefit the whole — horses and people included.”

Maki was quick to note that Wild Love Preserve is not a wild horse sanctuary. “We don’t have fences and we’re not just saving the horses. We’re also preserving the land on which they live — their natural, native turf.”

Another part of WLP’s mission is population management through what she calls “humane fertility control,” a safe, effective vaccine called Native PZP-1YR, developed by the Science and Conservation Center in Billings, Montana.

Every year WLP volunteers vaccinate a number of wild mares to keep the population from growing too large. As a result, since the 2012 roundup, no Idaho wild horses have been shipped to an out-of-state holding facility, which often, ultimately, leads to their being slaughtered. (There are currently more than 40,000 wild horses in long-term holding facilities, with an estimated 40,000 still running wild on Western public lands.)

And, as it turns out, WLP’s adoption and population-control efforts have saved American taxpayers more than $7.5 million since 2013, based on the government’s estimate of it costing $50,000 per lifetime for each wild horse.

WLP is now working toward a goal of ending the helicopter roundups completely, and the WLP model is being considered in other states with wild horse populations because of its opportunities for partnerships, tourism and youth education, training and employment.

But all of this costs money and WLP exists solely through private donations, grants and volunteer efforts.

“In the current political climate it’s getting harder to raise funds for all this,” Maki said. “I sold my house and my art studio because one of our biggest benefactors suddenly dropped out, right at the time that we’re trying to purchase a 10,000-acre property in Central Idaho from a rancher who believes in what we’re doing.”

And there are other ongoing expenses as well: lease payments on the 400-acres WLP already uses; equipment purchases; food for the WLP wild herd and other costs. Donations are gratefully accepted.

“Wild Love preserve is definitely a ‘we’ project,” Maki said. “It takes a village to save our wild horses and their native habitats as an interconnected whole.”

WANT TO HELP?

There are four ways in which the public can support Wild Love Preserve: (1) Donate to help pay the $6,000 monthly costs for the 400-acre lease that currently is home to WLP’s 137 wild horses; (2) Donate to help purchase supplemental winter hay. The horses need two tons of hay per day from October through April. A one-ton bale costs $150; (3) Donate to help pay for ranch equipment — a custom-built wild horse tilt chute and a front loader /backhoe; 4) Contribute to WLP’s Legacy Fund for purchase of the 10,000-acre permanent home for WLP’s wild horses.